Rulers & Guides

To assist you in keeping your photos and design aligned across multiple pages of a book you can turn on Rulers and Guides when in Layout View.  A Ruler with millimetre dimensions appears around the left and top edge of the canvas, and Guides can be dragged on to your page to mark the edge of a photo(s) at any time. Note: Rulers and Guides are never printed, and they do not appear in the Proof PDF, they are for onscreen viewing only.

Tip: These work in a similar way to rulers and guides in other graphic software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements.

To turn on Rulers

There are two ways to make the Rulers visible in Layout View:

1. Go to Edit Menu > Show Rulers
2. Use the Ctrl+' Keyboard Shortcut

To create a Guide

1. Turn Rulers on
2. Click on a Ruler
3. Drag it on to any position in the canvas and a blue line will appear on the page (this is a Guide)

To move a Guide

1. Move the cursor over the Guide until it turns into double ended arrows
2. Click and drag the Guide to its new position

To delete a Guide

1. Move the cursor over the Guide until it turns into double ended arrows
2. Click and drag the Guide back on to the Ruler

To remove all Guides

• Go to Edit Menu
• Select Clear Guides

To hide or show a Guide

If you only want to hide the Guide rather than delete it:

1. Go to Edit Menu
2. Select or Deselect the Show Guides setting

Note: You can toggle between Hide or Show Guides by using the Ctrl+; Keyboard Shortcut.

Safe Area

The Safe Area is a grey dotted line that runs a few millimetres in from the Page Edge, visible in the canvas in Layout View.  The Safe Area is designed as a visual guide so that you keep any important parts of a photo inside the Safe Area and away from the edge of the page.  Because our products are handmade, each page is trimmed and we don’t want you to lose a vital part of your design in that process. An Edge Warning alert is automatically activated when a photo is positioned outside the Safe Area so that you can check and reposition your photo accordingly.

Print to Edge Area

The Print to Edge Area is an invisible area that extends 3mm beyond the edge of the page and represents the edge that you need to extend your images to in order to guarantee that the image bleeds to the edge when printed.  If you set a photo to page background, it will automatically enlarge the image to meet the Print to Edge area.  Note: To adjust the cropped area of a background, hold the space bar and drag the image in to your preferred position.